Youth is the time of love. But there are old young people incapable of love – not because of sexual impotence but from an aridity of soul. There are also young old people who fall in love – some are ridiculous, some pathetic and some sublime. But can we love a body that has grown old or been disfigured by disease? It is very difficult but not entirely impossible. We should remember that eroticism is singular and finds no anomaly contemptible. Aren’t there beautiful monsters? It is also true that we can go on loving a person despite the erosion of habit and daily life, or the ravages of old age and infirmity. In such cases physical attraction ceases and love is transformed. In general it turns not into pity but compassion, in the sense of sharing another’s suffering. When he was already an old man, Unamuno said: “I do not feel anything when I brush against the legs of my wife, but mine ache if hers do.” The word passion also means suffering, and in this way too it designates the sentiment of love. Love is suffering and heartache, because it is a lack and the desire to possess what we lack; in turn, it is happiness because it is possession, even though the possession lasts but a moment. The Diccionario de Autoridades records another word no longer in use today but one employed by Petrarch: compathía, which might be translated as shared suffering. It is a forceful expression of that sentiment of love transfigured by the old age or infirmity of the beloved.